The Honorable Frederick D. Gregory
Deputy Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
General Lance W. Lord
Commander, Air Force Space Command
Lieutenant General Michael A. Hamel
Commander, Space and Missile Systems Center
“The New Space Pioneers”
Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition 2005
September 13, 2005
Mr. Gregory: I am really delighted to be able to participate on this panel this afternoon and look forward to some excellent discussions with General Lord and Lieutenant General Hamel.
[AFA Executive Director Donald L. Peterson] mentioned we're life members of AFA. I've been a life member since 1963, and I think AFA and USAA are two things that can really identify you as Air Force, for one thing, but under good insurance.
I look out and see an audience of American patriots and it's damn good to be here to see you because you've done such a fantastic job in the past, in the alert that you're constantly on now, and we have great expectations of you in the future. That goes for all of those in uniform and also the civilian-dressed folks here who I am sure have some association with the many things that our military does.
I want to talk about three things, but I want to comment on two subjects in descending order of importance first.
Two weeks ago, we witnessed probably the worst natural disaster in American history. Both the Air Force and the NASA family were affected by this devastating Hurricane Katrina with many of our people being caught in the storm's wake. I commend the Air Force Association, as I always do, for your efforts to encourage members to contribute to the Air Force Aid Society in addition to other charities dealing with the tremendous humanitarian challenge that we face today and in the near term future and even further than that.
At NASA we have something called the NASA Family Assistance Fund which is providing NASA Gulf Coast employees and their families with grant and loan assistance to help supplement other emergency funding assistance. This is the commercial part of it. Anyone in the audience who is so inclined can learn more about the NASA Family Assistance Fund at the website of the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, which is www.FEEA.org. We would sure appreciate it if you took a look at that.
I'm still missing about 300 or 400 people down in the Michoud Center which is just outside of New Orleans and in the Stennis area, which is in Mississippi just across the line. Both of those centers, the Michoud Center and Stennis, were extremely hard hit by Katrina. I guess we were lucky because both were high ground or protected by levees. Michoud does not have ground access yet, unless it's occurred in the last day or two, and everything in there is by chopper. It's a bit better at Stennis, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is located and doing the majority of their operations out of there.
As I said, we're still missing a few hundred folks, but our major effort at this point is to stabilize our activities down there and find housing or homes or apartments for the folks who unfortunately lost their homes. We've opened a Relocation Assistance Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center, which is in Huntsville, to support NASA employees and contractors evacuating or relocating to the Huntsville area. Through the center, we are helping evacuees and their families resolve financial concerns, find temporary or long-term housing and receive needed services.
I think this is not unusual. I think this is just something typical of what we do, whether it be in NASA, in the civilian world, in the government, in the military, that demonstrates that we are a family and we work together because we all recognize that the strength of all of the operations is based on you all, the people. Without the people, we essentially have nothing.
The important work of recovery lies ahead. NASA's committed to maintaining our proud tradition of utilizing the Stennis Space Center and Michoud Assembly Facility to produce the space hardware and research application products that contribute so greatly to our nation's space activities. The outstanding people of Stennis and Michoud have stood by NASA in good times and bad, and the NASA leadership is determined to honor their commitment. I can tell you, you can count on it.
The second thing is, prior to discussing space activities, I want to add a personal note here. Last week I announced that I will resign as NASA's Deputy Administrator following 31 years as a test pilot, an astronaut and a member of NASA's leadership. After my announcement I've received many good wishes from friends throughout the space community—the majority of them, though, have come from the Air Force community. I want to express from the bottom of my heart how much those good wishes mean to me.
In my career, I've worked for two organizations that are simply the best, and I can't say enough about those experiences. The United States Air Force is the world premier organization devoted to preserving the peace and defending freedom through air and space force projection and may it ever be so.
I might add parenthetically that for the first time in years, my team, the Air Force Academy Falcons, have demonstrated a proven and potent aerial attack, so there is progress all around. [Laughter] I live, by the way, five minutes from the Naval football field and will be there in the middle of the Navy crowd with all of my Air Force regalia on. So when you see the Navy/Air Force game, my wife and I will be standing and screaming—look for me. [Laughter and Applause]
I'm convinced that NASA, through the work it does to pioneer the space frontier, is the world's greatest research and exploration agency.
Thirty-one years ago, a young pilot who earned his spurs flying helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in Vietnam got new orders from Uncle Sam. I was assigned to work as a test pilot at NASA's Langley Research Center. My orders said my stay at NASA would last two years. I'll bet there are a number of people in the audience who know a thing or two about orders and the way somehow they keep changing.
So here I am, 31 years later, still in NASA, still waiting for that next set of orders. Since they have not come, as I mentioned last week, I've written my own and I hope that the Inspector General doesn't investigate.
Anyway, I'm very happy with the decision that I've made and I’ve had so much fun doing the things that I've done in the Air Force and NASA. I think now it's time to step out and give some of you that same opportunity. So that is the real reason I have left. It's like I was a commander in the space shuttle. As along as I was in that queue you could not get a new commander in there, so it was a very conscious decision that I made to step away.
I know at this moment we have a new deputy nominated, but if you think that you can do a better job than she could, please see me after the talk and we will go talk to the President immediately. [Laughter]
As I prepare to take leave, I must tell you that I've never been so proud of the work that NASA does for the American public, and also about the future of the space program, as I am today. Through our vision for space exploration, with the bold plan to employ astronaut pioneers and robotic pathfinders and open up the solar system to the expansion of human civilization, NASA has a challenge worthy of our nation's questing spirit. It is also an exploration program that, as President Bush has said, will enhance America's long-term economic, scientific and security interests.
On this latter matter, let me suggest a couple of ways in which our exploration agenda will be good for the nation's security. Just as the Apollo moon landing program inspired the youth of America to pursue exciting careers in scientific and engineering fields, so we believe our bold program to set up base camps on the moon, Mars and beyond will inspire a new generation of scientists, engineers and astronauts, many of whom will work for the Armed Forces or the companies that support the nation's defense.
Second, to successfully implement our vision, we will need to accelerate development of a number of cutting edge technologies, all of which are useful for national security purposes. I'm confident that NASA will be at the forefront in advances in robotics, autonomous and fault tolerance systems, human/machine interfaces, materials, life support systems, and novel applications of micro devices.
NASA's interest in developing the space launch vehicles and spacecraft that will take crews and supplies well beyond low earth orbit has also spurred productive cooperation on items of mutual interest in space transportation requirements between the space agency and the defense community.
In this regard, last month NASA's Administrator, Mike Griffin, and the DoD Executive Agent for Space, Dr. Ron Sega, signed a letter which outlined our agreement on our respective requirements for future launch systems. Responding to the President's National Security Policy Directive Number 40, the agreement stipulates that separating human-rated space exploration from unmanned payload launch will best achieve reliable and affordable assured access to space while maintaining our industrial base in both liquid and solid propulsion launch systems.
The major elements of this agreed strategy for the use and development of national launch systems are as follows ... First, both NASA and DoD will utilize the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle for all immediate, intermediate and larger payloads for national security, civil and science missions, in the five- to twenty-metric ton class to the maximum extent possible consistent with the law and national policies. Where practical, this will include resupply missions to the space station.
Second, NASA will initiate development of a crew launch vehicle derived from space shuttle solid rocket boosters with a new upper stage for human space flight missions in the 25- to 30-metric ton class. This vehicle will support missions to the space station and then on to the surface of the moon.
Third, NASA will begin the development in approximately 2010 of a new 125-metric ton class vehicle that will carry on in the tradition of the Saturn 5 in supporting the next generation of lunar exploration.
This agreement also calls on NASA and DoD to explore mutually beneficial cooperation for new upper stage development, advanced materials, other new propulsion technologies and potential ride shares on manned and unmanned missions with both sides hitching rides on each other's capabilities. Significantly, the NASA/DoD agreement complements the work initiated last April within NASA to design the complete architecture for our new human-rated spacecraft and cargo carriers that will enable our astronauts to make the seventh human lunar landing before the end of the next decade.
There are other areas of cooperation worth mentioning. Through the Space Partnership Council formed seven years ago between NASA and the Air Force Space Command, with the later addition of the U.S. Strategic Command, Defense Research and Engineering, and the National Reconnaissance Office, we're also working together to significantly improve our space communications technological capabilities.
The Partnership Council is looking at the possibility of combining future communications capabilities in support of our space satellite operations and implementing these in a system that will serve all the parties. Through what we call a “transformational communication architecture,” we're seeking to expand inter-networking and interoperability, increase the protection of data rates, enhance communications redundancy, allow for quicker data access searches and provide new ways to support manned space flight and scientific data collection and dissemination. Again, all parties will benefit from this unique partnership.
Finally, through NASA's Earth Observing System, we are developing a flotilla of 26 earth-observing satellites and other technologies that will help provide scientists a solid foundation for understanding earth's complex climate system. In this effort we're demonstrating a number of unique uses for images, radar and lasers needed to probe the earth's systems structure and dynamics. In addition to their scientific promise, the national security community has identified potential uses for these technologies. As a consequence, we're working through the Partnership Council to help our colleagues better understand and utilize these emerging technologies.
Back in 1941, Henry Luce, the founder and editor of TIME Magazine, predicted the coming of the American century, a time when we would accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world. By Luce's standards, we're still in the midst of that American century, and I firmly believe that what we can do in the civil and military space community to advance progress in our common fields has never been more critical for our country and we definitely need to do a lot more.
So I commend all of you for your commitment to unmatched American leadership in air and in space and I want to thank you for the wonderful privilege of being part of a great Air Force and NASA tradition. I look forward to taking your questions and talking to you folks after this presentation.
Thank you very much.
General Lord: It's a delight for me to be here and I want to say a warm welcome to Fred Gregory. Thanks, Fred, for joining us and being part of this. And to Mike and the great leaders and warriors out at the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), it's a delight to be here.
Over the next few minutes, let me just kind of lay out some context for our follow-on discussions, and I want to talk about that, as you might suspect, in three points. I want to talk about the end of the beginning of space warfare. I would argue that Operation Iraqi Freedom is really the end of the beginning. Number two would be the future landscape that we face as a team working together, certainly with our partners in government, NASA and others. Lastly, a focus on the new space pioneers. The emphasis, really, and the foot-stomper part of that is that the future has already started, so we better get busy.
Let's talk about the end of the beginning of space warfare. I think it's interesting when we gather at conferences like this and we thank the Air Force Association for giving us an opportunity to do that and talk about how our capabilities really transform what we do in the military. I would argue the simple fact is space has already transformed the modern battlefield. Space has saved lives by making us more precise, more timely, and more joint. And [USAF Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley] said the day he took over and spent some time with us talking about space capabilities, he said, “space was joint before joint was cool.” So we've been working together in this business for a while and I think our new Chief certainly understands that and appreciates it.
As we mentioned earlier today, the stand-up of the Joint Space Operations Center that General Hamel started when he was 14th Air Force Commander and now carried by Major General William L. Shelton out there at Vandenberg Air Force Base, has been another major step forward as we realize our full potential in integrating space as a true joint force integrator. It gives us one-stop shopping, whether you're talking about supporting operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or really helping the folks down on the Gulf Coast as we saw over the last week or so. Perhaps some of you in the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) class or maybe others have read The World Is Flat by Tom Freidman. He talks about how space is really working as a joint force integrator, and we look at what's gone on in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
If you'd been in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit's command center in Iraq in the fall of 2004—and perhaps some of you were—you'd have seen an amazing sight. Well, it's not really that amazing any more. We kind of take it for granted. It's just like most of the other command centers we visit, whether it's in Iraq, Afghanistan or any place around the world—several flatscreen TVs showing overhead footage of potential targets, in this case insurgents moving around a house. On an adjacent screen you could see an instant chat message session going on as the live events unfolded. You know these overhead images we talked about earlier today were taken by a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and that UAV was being flown by a pilot sitting in a control station in Indian Springs near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Those live chat sessions, well, the UAV images were simultaneously being transmitted to U.S. Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Central Command's regional headquarters in Qatar, and also to the Pentagon. And probably some of our agency partners were watching in real time as well.
So the sum of that is intelligence analysts around the globe are watching live events, analyzing the unfolding situation and recommending courses of action.
To me, this is a great example of how space is shrinking the battlefield and transforming our combat effectiveness. The end result is we strike precisely where we need to, when we need to, and before the adversary has a chance to react. We put less people in harm's way and have less collateral damage and more combat effects. We've reduced the kill chain from weeks and days to hours and minutes, and as a result, as our previous Air Force Secretary, Dr. James G. Roche, said space is an equal partner with land, sea and air forces.
What this does, it really puts our men and women of the U.S. military force, along with their government partners, in a position to succeed. If that's not ‘transformation’ under the current definition, I don't know what is.
Now we can brag about it and talk about it in the wings and squadrons, but we have to be careful we don't get too wrapped up in this moment because we've got to really protect this advantage. I think we face a set of potential adversaries that are smarter than a lot of people think. And every day that we fail to innovate and take advantage of this, making sure we can manage this gap and protect it, that gap could get smaller. Space has transformed modern warfare, but unless we remain vigilant that can easily become untransformed, if you will.
The passing of General Bernard A. Schriever, the father of space and missiles, on June 20th of this year marked the symbolic end of the beginning of space warfare. I'm convinced that what we see in an OEF and OIF is just a warm-up act for things that will come in the future. I think we're at a similar point to where we were in aircraft at the dawn of the jet age. You recall back in December of 2003 we celebrated the 100th Anniversary of Powered Flight. Now we're about halfway to that point with space. We're almost equivalent to the dawn of the jet age. The space age has just started its second half-century, and what will be our Jet Age, if you will?
Imagine where we would be if in the '50s and '60s we failed to expand the envelope of aircraft design and technology? I think the same type of challenges await us in space in a way. You, the new space pioneers, are going to help us.
So what about the future landscape? In my mind the future landscape is really threatened by one thing and that comes from our sense of complacency that we won't be challenged in this environment, that it's a benign environment. I don't think we can assume a permissive environment, nor can we assume that every conflict that we're going to have in the future is like OIF or OEF. I'm convinced we'll be challenged in space. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
We know the recipe and General Hamel's going to probably talk a little bit about that with his great folks in the acquisition business, and we know how to do things right. For instance, in the launch business, since the end of the '90s in our launch broad area review, we've had 42 successful launches in a row. We’re on our way to 1,000 in a row. That's a great turn-around from the story we had in the late '90s when we put about $11 billion worth of satellites on deep ocean surveillance. [Laughter] That's not the desired outcome.
So we know what to do and we're facing an environment where we're going to be threatened. Let's take a country, for example let's pick China. It just recently completed its 45th successful satellite launch since 1996. Now they had some failures along the way, but that should give us pause when we think about resting and admiring our own handiwork.
The rest of the world doesn't just want to be like us, they want to get ahead of us. I'm not picking on China, I'm just saying there's an example of a country who's got a determined space effort that we need to be aware of and we need to understand what it means to compete in this environment.
Space has already transformed modern warfare and our entire economy could be easily untransformed, if you will, if we let a false sense of security take root. Success or failure with systems like the Transformational Satellite Communications, Space-Based Infrared System, Advanced Extremely High Frequency, and Global Positioning III System will create an effect that is really applied for warfighters in the years to come, and we've got to get it right. I think we've diagnosed the issue. We know how to do the launch business, I think we know how to do systems acquisition, and I am depending on Mike Hamel and his team and we're going to make sure we follow the recipe.
Our first priority must be space superiority backed up by mission assurance, achieved through Lieutenant General Mike Hamel's SMC acquisition team and their experts. There's no doubt in my mind that we need to step up to that. We can't assume that our lead will stay safe and that asymmetric advantage will be maintained without us working hard in the future. We need the new pioneers involved in that. Space superiority to me is analogous to air superiority, which is why it must be one of our first priorities. Going to war without air superiority would be unthinkable. The same holds true in space.
Space situation awareness, defensive counterspace and offensive counterspace—we need all three of these working together. They're hand in hand with our other first priority, which is strategic deterrence. You heard me talk about that earlier today. Our ICBM force north of Interstate 80, that's one reason why we haven't been attacked with weapons of mass destruction.
We use ICBMs every day around the world to assure our allies, dissuade our foes, and deter attack. While this nation will always need strategic deterrence, we shouldn't lock ourselves into the mindset that deterrence will always be nuclear. There is a real need to develop a capability that's flexible, tailored and conventional, as well, that will expand the envelope and give us credibility across the entire threat spectrum. We're working hard with General James E. Cartright at STRATCOM to make sure that he has a warfighting capability he can depend on day to day.
Next, we talk about assured access to space. As I said, we've got a strong launch team, but we've got to match our payloads to our boosters sometimes two years in advance of the launch. Think about what's going to happen in those two-year timeframes. A whole generation of computers will come and go in less than two years. Many people in here I know have a cell phone, older than two years old perhaps. If you do, you're probably looking for a new one, one that takes pictures and can play games and do all the stuff that's going on in this business. It's amazing what's happening in a technological transformation. We've got to get in step with that. We've got to be able to lead and shape that. We're trying to do that with Operation Responsive Space, where we can shift to a new way of thinking. That's where we need our new pioneers.
There's no doubt that solving the launch piece, figuring out how to get to space more cheaply, is a huge challenge. We're going to need a breakthrough. We're going to have to get that jet engine in space, got to get the aircraft-like operations tempo.
As I mentioned, we're also talking about the medium of near space. There are challenges in that environment from 65,000 to 325,000 feet, with power systems and the size of craft needed to work in that environment, but I don't think that's anything we can't handle. And we've got some new pioneers that are working this hard every day and we're going to do some demos here very soon that will prove that near space has some capability to bring responsive warfighting to our combatant commanders.
This future sometimes seems hard to imagine, but just stop and think of what our allied pilots thought the first time they saw the German Messerschmidt ME-262, the first operational jet fighter, in action. I'm sure they couldn't believe their eyes, much less envision the F/A-22 or the C-17 for that matter. Complacency or lack of imagination in space is something we simply cannot afford. That's why we need the new space pioneers, and we've got to get them fast because the future's already started.
That's what our Space Professional Development Program does for us. It's getting us off to a running start. We've done this across our acquisition, our operations, in the career fields—officer, enlisted and civilian—and we're also extending our Space Professional Development arm to our partners in NASA and our contractors as well. We need space pioneers who can think beyond their functional stovepipe. We need an understanding beyond commercial and military space. We need an understanding of the full spectrum of land, sea and air operations. We need well-rounded space professionals.
I just was down in the Exhibit Hall and I saw the Falcon Sat II from the Air Force Academy. They developed a small satellite that will be launched this fall on TacSat I with an Elan Musk Space X program. They've got astro engineers working on the payload and they've also got political science majors working on the acquisition and the programming. They've got people involved in all aspects, depending on what their majors are in college. They're working as part of the integrated acquisition team for Falcon Sats. So I think that's an example of how you put together a team to develop that capability.
So we need these new pioneers. At SMC, we've acknowledged we've got a talent gap. We got to where we are with a shortage of engineers and systems engineers who are part of our team. We’ve got a bathtub, if you will, in terms of talent and capability. We've got to fill that bathtub quickly. We've got to mature these experiences. We need new pioneers in this business. It's been recognized by General Hamel and brought to me and also to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff. We've recognized that as an Air Force problem. We need new pioneers and we need them fast.
I don't think it's wise for us to assume that we'll always be the best—that's a sure recipe for disaster. I think the most recent Olympic basketball team taught us that lesson. We got complacent thinking all we had to do was show up. It was not the best strategy. Although in some cases showing up is 90 percent. In this case it wasn't. We need you space pioneers. Many in the public are looking for us to lead and shape this future environment.
We've done well. It’s partly our fault, I guess, that space has become too transparent. The public needs to know and we need the pioneers out there working hard to make sure that a day without space isn't just a bad day for our military. We have to understand that it could be a bad day for the entire world economy.
I'm looking forward to working with you. I want to make sure that you're part of the team. I look forward to engaging in the question and answer session.
And one thing I'd like to do as we close here and before General Hamel gets up ... I'd like to share with you an old African proverb. Perhaps you've heard this, but it best sums up why we need to get moving here.
As the proverb goes, every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. At the same time, every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. So it doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better start running. [Laughter] In this case, we've got to run because we need you pioneers and we will continue to maintain our advantage with your support.
Thanks, and I look forward to your questions.
Lieutenant General Hamel: Thank you very much. It's a great honor and privilege to be joining this panel this afternoon to talk on what I think is an extremely important topic and it's also a very opportune point in the history of space power to be talking about this.
Let me first thank the leadership of AFA for both hosting this forum and for the support over the years in addressing some of the most important topics to our Air Force. This condones that fine tradition in what I think has been the extraordinary leadership and partnership that we've had with AFA.
As General Lord pointed out, we're at about the half-century point in the first century of military space power, and it really is an important point to reflect a bit about how did we get to where we are, as well as where it is that we are going.
I think the idea of talking about “pioneers” is appropriate because we know that we are a nation of pioneers. Whether it be that we immigrated from overseas or as we pushed westward across this country, exploration has always been a part of our DNA in this country, so understanding where pioneers actually pushed the frontiers and how we have done that in the case of military space is truly important.
Let's just reflect a little bit … I think many people may be aware that back in the late 1980s, the Air Force started recognizing its early space pioneers, and we actually have a Space and Missile Hall of Fame that identifies some of those great prior leaders. Obviously, the scion of all was General Benny Schriever, who passed away recently and, as General Lord said, this sort of marked the conclusion of the first 50 years of military space.
In 1954, he started the then Western Development Division, the predecessor to the command now that I have the privilege to lead, and he truly is the father of military space and probably, more broadly, the father of how it is we develop cutting edge technology for our military.
Let me remind you of a couple of other names out there that were so important. Major General Osmand J. Ritland, the gentleman that actually began what was then Cooke Air Force Base, that suddenly became Vandenberg Air Force Base and from which more launches have occurred than any other single site in the world. He truly had an extraordinary sense of leadership in bringing on board both missile and space capabilities for the nation.
Dr. Simon Ramo, one of the great giants of our time. Earned a PhD from CalTech in both Physics and EE by the age of 23. He led the entire development of the ICBM technical and engineering development for the nation with General Schriever and indeed, was the forefather of TRW as well as many of the other great engineering houses this nation has known.
One of my great patrons and friends, Brigadier General William G. King, Jr., who as a young lieutenant colonel was the program director for what was then Weapons System 117, the predecessor to every satellite program and concept that we have today, all the way from Corona to the infrared surveillance satellites to the communications. He tells great stories about how having trundled around with a briefing trying to convince all manners of people that space indeed was at the forefront. You only wish you could have been a fly on the wall with some of those briefings that were out there with General Curtis E. LeMay.
More recently, one of the new inductees was Lieutenant General Forrest S. McCartney, another great giant of the business. As a young lieutenant, he was one of the project officers on the Corona satellite program. For those that may not be familiar, we went through 12 consecutive failures before we got the first functioning photo-reconnaissance satellite on orbit. You have to ask yourself how much grit does it really take to be able to withstand multiple, multiple failures and still be determined to be successful? General McCartney went on to lead the command that I now am associated with, the Space and Missile Center. He was the Director of the Kennedy Space Center with NASA, and likewise is a giant in industry. Truly a great leader whose blood runs blue from his early Air Force days.
These truly are extraordinary examples of the range of space pioneers whose shoulders we stand on now as space professionals.
I mentioned to you that this really is a propitious time for us to be considering this, and I would point out that within the next 30 days we are going to see the closure of another great tradition in the Air Force, and that is the Titan launch vehicle program. We will fly the last Titan launch vehicle in the middle of October with perhaps the most important payload that we have had in over three decades.
But think back about the Titan launch system. From very basic concept to first flight was four years. From 1961 to the first flight in 1965, the Titan 3C, which became the legacy for all of our advanced launch vehicles, it was accomplished in four and a half years. Extraordinary.
I will tell you that I personally believe that history will note and conclude that space was absolutely critical to winning the Cold War, and it created a unique strategic advantage for this nation which we enjoy today and we continue to evolve this. As General Lord pointed out, this is something that we can not take for granted.
So take a look at a couple of those pioneers and how is it that they helped bring these changes about? What might we conclude? What was the ingredient? What made them so effective in what it is that they did and led?
I'd say there are a number of attributes. One was vision. I don't think anybody can deny that the ability to conceive and to imagine beyond known human experience is a truly unique talent. People such as General Schriever and General King truly had vision.
They likewise had extraordinary technical capabilities. They understood you couldn't violate the laws of physics, but rather you had to bend them to our own purposes, and they understood how to be pushing at the very forefront of the technological art of the possible.
Likewise, there was just an unfailing sense of mission and urgency. We knew at the beginning of the ventures in missiles and space that indeed we had a mortal enemy in the Soviet Union and this was a national imperative to ensure that we didn't come in second in the space race or in the missile race. They understood their mission and they knew that they could not rest.
There was unwavering commitment and leadership. They understood that they had to be singularly focused on mission success and delivering what it was the nation needed, and that it wasn't about passively watching and observing, but rather they had to lead from the front to bring together a great industry as well as government team to produce the capabilities.
So I'd argue that many of those same attributes are the things that we're using today as we go about trying to build that next generation of space pioneers. It's really comprised of a pretty broad team, as General Lord touched upon. It includes space operators. It includes people that do space development and acquisition and laboratory operations. It includes warriors that are at the very cutting edge, that are integrating space operational capabilities into every weapon system platform and combat arms that we have as a nation.
But what brings together and binds this entire community of space warriors and professionals, it really is about having expertise and knowledge in the medium of space. It's understanding that Keppler is different than Bernoulli, it's understanding that in the vast vacuums of space the laws of physics are different, it's understanding how we actually exploit and control this medium to assure that we are able to be successful on the battlefield.
Again, you ask yourself, so what skills do we need for this new generation of space leaders and pioneers? I'd argue we've got to go back to some of the basics again. We need strong technical and operational skills, people that truly understand how to become masters of their platform. We need to be able to understand how do you launch and operate satellites that you will never touch after they lift off? You have to be able to understand how do you interact with computers and radars and laser beacons to be able to understand how you operate these platforms in far-off space? We need to likewise have the kind of expertise that our nuclear ICBM maintainers bring, a sense of zero tolerance for failure and having a surety of our missions and capabilities at all times. And finally, I would argue that we need to have both joint operational experience as well as command experience in our future joint space professionals.
So if those are the objective skills that we need to have, how are we going about doing this? I think General Lord touched on it, the Space Professional Development strategy and plan that he has championed and led over the past several years truly is laying the foundation for all that we need for the future. We're accessing all the right people, be that officer or enlisted, that have the right kind of backgrounds and skills. We likewise are providing additional structured training and education. Space 100, 200 and 300 level courses that provide basic, intermediate as well as advanced training in terms of the art and the science and the application of space power. Advanced academic degrees from some of the best institutions in the country, Professional Military Education, fellowship programs, and more recently actually creating a Space Weapons Course at Nellis Air Force Base to ensure that our space warriors are integrated together with other weapons platforms and warriors.
But it's not enough, as we know, to have the right kind of education and training. You've also got to develop and hone the experience and the judgment. Diversity of assignments for our future space warriors is absolutely going to be critical. We've already started a very aggressive program to cross-flow people between these respective communities and Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSCs) and career fields, between operations and acquisition, between intelligence in space and communications. We're ensuring that our young space warriors are getting every opportunity to deploy and operate as part of the Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEFs), bringing their expertise to the pointy edge of the spear.
Likewise, we're ensuring that we have proper joint and interagency assignments so that our space professionals are contributing to the missile defense problem. Also, assignments with the National Reconnaissance Office and NASA, with unified combatant commands, so that our warriors are not just thinking about a single-dimensional space bar, but really how does space contribute to our entire national interests and capabilities?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, how do we create opportunities for leadership development through command, from the flight to the squadron to the group to the wing and beyond?
More to home, in Space and Missile Systems Center, we refer to ourselves as being the birthplace of military space and we earned that right by virtue of following on from General Schriever in the 1950s. I'd like to think that we're creating our own contributions to this new group of space pioneers. You might ask, so how are we going about doing that? I'd argue, as was pointed out, it really is a matter of getting back to basics and getting back to following the recipe that proved so effective during the first decades.
As we're bringing young officers into our business, we're making sure they get the requisite training before we throw them into the program offices in a sink or swim kind of environment. We're making sure they get systems engineering, acquisition courses, we ensure that they get controlled tours so that we've got continuity and stability in their development. We're making sure they get the opportunity for advanced academic education through local universities, Air Force Institute of Technology, Naval Post Graduate School. And we’re making sure through the assignments process within SMC that we build upon their experiences, whether that be in program offices, in functional areas, or other kinds of staff areas.
It's just not enough to be able to give people different assignments—you've got to give them the right kind of tools. There's been a reinvigoration of our entire systems engineering process. Primers have been developed, handbooks have been created, we're starting to develop better software standards, and returning systems, standards and instructions to ensure that we've got the right kind of expectations in line with industry and that our people are familiar with how you go about following the best practices.
One of the things that I'm particularly interested in is, again, it's not just enough to do the instruction, but how do you really go about understanding the art of our business? A lot of this comes from bringing back people that have had experience previously, to help coach and mentor our next generation of program and systems and technical leaders within the Air Force. I would just say, parenthetically, having spent my entire career in the space business, that one of the great highlights of that was having learned from great professionals, such as the Aerospace Corporation has to offer, that truly can help teach our young men and women exactly the art and the science of space operations and development.
Finally, one of the real big points that General Lord touched on also that I think is essential, is that we've got to move as an Air Force, as a joint warfighting community, beyond simply developing a series of stovepiped space capabilities. It's no longer enough to simply have different communication systems and GPS and space superiority. We've got to horizontally integrate these and deliver real integrated warfighting capabilities to be employed on a global as well as theater basis, and horizontal integration is right at the top of the list.
Talking about space pioneers is kind of abstract if we think about the future, and I think it's always important to sort of reflect upon examples. At the risk of perhaps embarrassing a few people, let me name a few names here if I could because I think it's very useful to try to study and understand what are we talking about. Having listened to General Moseley recently talk about this a bit, I don't think I'm talking out of school.
Let me touch on Major General Willy Shelton, the current Commander of 14th Air Force. From the days he was a second lieutenant he has served in the space business. As you heard today, he's the commander of all space operations for the United States Air Force as well as STRATCOM's Commander of Joint Space Operations. He's done satellite and ICBM command, policy, joint experience, and indeed worked in Operation Enduring Freedom as the space and information operational lead for U.S. Space Command.
Brigadier General Larry D. James, again, a career-long space professional and leader. He is the senior space officer supporting General Moseley during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has served in operations and acquisition experience, most recently as the Vice Commander at the Space and Missile Systems Center, is a warrior and a commander as well as now the Director of National SIGINT Programs for the NRO.
Brigadier General Dick Webber, another great officer, leader, commander. He's been a missileer, space operator, the Vice Commander of the Aerospace Command, Control and ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) Center. Today, he is leading our space superiority operations for the entire United States Air Force and by definition the nation.
It's not just about generals. There are others out there, too. Lieutenant Colonel Tony Loge. Tony is a space acquisition professional, worked the 10-CAP program for a number of years, served in Air Force Special Operations Command integrating Blue Force Tracking capabilities before Operation Enduring Freedom. Recently noted by the snake-eater community as one of the great performers because of what he accomplished in equipping the forces before the battles in Afghanistan to ensure we could track forces at all times.
One more person I’d like to talk about is Major Mark Mane. A fine young space officer, missileer, space launch individual, he worked in the Space Air Operation Center, and supported General James as well as General Moseley during Operation Enduring Freedom. He was on console, the lead guy when we had an F-14 go down, and through his determined effort ensured that we were able to conduct combat search and rescue operations within less than an hour and extract the air crew, based upon his ability to harness space power to our needs on the battlefield.
These are all examples of space pioneers that are in the making today and are good examples to try to emulate for the future.
Let me just close here by talking a little bit about some of the challenges on the horizon, some of the things I wake up at night and worry about.
One of the things I seriously am concerned about is the decline in our overall workforce in terms of total numbers and the depth of experience, the lack of technical education. I think if we look at how the rest of the world is understanding how technical expertise really is the engine for progress, and yet we take a look at our own nation, both in industry as well as in our military, we’re faced with challenges in making sure that we're second to none in terms of our technical skills. That is critical.
I also see a bit of a loss of excitement about space. Maybe that's because it's become too accepted, too mundane, but candidly, I think we all owe it to ourselves as well as those that come behind to try and reinstill that same kind of incitement and wonder many of us had in the 1950s, '60s and '70s that this truly is a special medium and domain. We owe it to others to try to instill that.
Another challenge is the complacency about space superiority. General Lord has been at the forefront of ensuring that the nation never forgets that the advantages we enjoy from space cannot be taken for granted. Hope cannot be a strategy. We must ensure the dependence we have on space will be fulfilled by our vigilance in terms of protecting that.
Let me just suggest to you that one of the key things about pioneers is nobody knows who they're going to be at the time. I dare say that General Claire L. Chennault did not know when he was Captain Chennault down at Maxwell Air Force Base that he was going to become a true icon of air power. Likewise, I can guarantee you General Bill King did not know that when he was trundling around briefings with General LeMay and others trying to push WS-117 that he truly was a pioneer. Many of you out in this audience today will be pioneers in your own ways—some big, some small. But that's one of the unique things about pioneers is you don't know who it is when it happens.
As we sit here at the threshold of the 21st century I think that it's important to note that the 19th century really was the century of Pax Britannica, and the dominance of maritime power; and I think history will record that the 20th century was really dominated by air power, the emergence of air as a medium, the use of which really did dominate and define the 20th century. I hope it's not too much hyperbole to be thinking in terms of how the 21st century will be the space century.
If there's one thing that we all need to pause and think about it’s that as we stand at the threshold we are indeed the most capable space power in the world today. It's something that we derive enormous national advantage and strategic benefit from. I hope that each and every one of you that has a role and a passion about this business will take some of that to heart and understand that we have to lay the foundation and be committed to never, ever, ever give up our ability to control and dominate the medium of space.
I thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts here and look forward to the questions and discussion.
Q: Can you talk about the seam between black and white space, and your thoughts on the future of the NRO and the Space and Missile Center?
Lieutenant General Hamel: I think that's a very important topic, and again I think there's some great historical foundations to look at that from.
From the very early days of the national security space program we had a very close and intimate connection between the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. Regrettably, much of that is clouded in classified history and is not well understood. I think that, from my perspective, although the NRO was a product of the Cold War, the time has come for us to really look to the future of what should be the mission, the purpose and the organization of the NRO as well as what its relationship should be with the Air Force. I think we've got to move beyond simply thinking in terms of black and white space to really looking at how do we control and exploit and take advantage of space across the full spectrum.
My personal conviction is that we need to continue a healthy and vital National Reconnaissance Office and we need to reconnect many of the historic and tight connections between the United States Air Force and the NRO which again goes back to the very earliest days, and I'm hopeful we'll be able to do that and there will be new opportunities in the future.
General Lord: Let me add a little bit to that. Right now, at a senior level, I’ve been discussing this in meetings with the Secretary of the Air Force, the Under Secretary, the Chief, the Chairman of the JCS and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Dr. Stephen A. Cambone. General Hamel is quite right with respect to the talent that we have. There are about 1,300 Air Force members in the NRO, some of the most capable people in the business in that wonderful organization.
As we look at how to best draw the diagram and make sure that we can take full advantage of those capabilities in a closer and tighter way, recognizing what General Hamel's got to do with his acquisition skills, etc., I think we'll see in the days and months ahead a kind of new relationship that will take the best of both and combine them into a really good setup for the future.
So I see those seams starting to close and we need to make sure that we can really take advantage of the skills on both sides of the Air Force and the NRO and really work hard together.
Q: I was thinking how if I was a bad guy attempting to counter our space capabilities, I'd probably do three things right off the top of my head: I'd look to asymmetrically take out our ground stations, jam our satellite signals, and perhaps even go after our satellites. I'm wondering if you could, and of course this is an unclassified forum, discuss briefly what we're doing to harden our systems against the asymmetric threat, as well as addressing our defensive counterspace efforts.
General Lord: I think you're hitting on a very important part of this. We've established as part of our overall strategy, when you look at the mission area of space superiority, the first priority is space situational awareness. That's understanding the threat, understanding who's out there and what they might try to do, understanding the environment to make sure that we're protected.
The second priority is defensive counterspace, where we look at links and nodes, the ground systems, making sure that we've got redundant systems, backups and capability.
I've instituted a Mission Assurance Office in our headquarters. We look very hard. We have a defense counterspace mindset. General Hamel was at 14th Air Force. We exercise the defensive counterspace loop all the time, whenever we have an anomaly. We don't assume that it's benign. We don't assume that somebody's trying to get us, but we don't assume they're not either. We want to make sure that we work those and protect the links and nodes. GPS especially is important to us and we're protecting that system. We've added new ground stations, working hard together there.
Mike, you might want to comment a little bit more on that as well?
Lieutenant General Hamel: Yes, sir, thank you.
I think that, as General Lord says, this is a very important issue that as we've grown more dependent upon space it really is an imperative that we understand where potentially there are vulnerabilities. We're trying to add robustness in terms of ground control elements and back-up routing and communications to ensure that we don't, if you will, have critical vulnerable links out there.
Perhaps the most important thing we need to do is to horizontally integrate all of our space capabilities. We live in a world of stovepipe capabilities, and adversaries don't think about it that way. We really need to understand the status of all of our forces simultaneously, to be able to know how systems are actually linked and routed and all the rest of that in this netcentric world. And so there are a number of things we're really focusing in on to try to do to harden up and create more robustness in defense and depth for all of our systems.
General Lord: One postscript to that. We're working with our partners, NASA especially, at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and also with Brigadier General David “Smash” Stringer at the Arnold Engineering Development Center, on testing our capabilities and looking at understanding the environment of space, proximity operations, all the things that add up to our credibility of being able to defend our assets. So we've got a good partnership established there and are doing great work together.
Q: My question is for General Hamel. Sir, I wondered if you'd expect that federal spending in response to Hurricane Katrina would have any impact on space programs, by perhaps leading to the pursuit of less expensive upgrades to legacy systems rather than transformational new systems like TSAT or GPS-3.
Lieutenant General Hamel: I have the pleasure of being the executor of the programs and do not have to wrestle with the actual priorities and profiles. I personally believe that our current dependence and what we have on the drawing board for our space capabilities are things that are absolutely essential for the transformation of our military, and irrespective of what the particular spend profile is, we are really committed to continuing to advance development as well as growing investments in space.
But again, what the impact will be in a budget sense, others will have to answer that.
Q: Where do you think we are headed in terms of a separate space corps, an independent service? Could we be better served by a cabinet level department for space, combining Air Force Space Command, NRO, NASA and other assets?
General Lord: I don't think we're headed anywhere near a separate space corps. I think the integration and working the seams as we've been doing is really paying off for us. I think we're really developing a set of expertise with our professional development program and our capabilities to really control and exploit the environment of space and we fit close with our air partners in that respect. Space has become an equal partner with air, land and sea. I think that's one of the things we've seen from the capabilities we've been able to demonstrate in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, but we're going to have to continue to work that hard in the future.
I think if we were to split apart then we'd create a whole different set of bureaucracies and we'd still have to integrate the output, so I think it would be detrimental to the business. We'd create a whole lot of heat and no light on the subject, that's for sure. That's kind of how I see it.
Q: Does the Air Force have plans to change ROTC requirements to encourage the development of future space pioneers? Will there be appropriate undergrad courses that one can use to prepare for a career as a space professional?
Lieutenant General Hamel: I cannot speak for any specific programs or activities, but I will tell you from my perspective as a user of some of this human capital, I think it's going to be very important for us to really try to incentivize and encourage more technical education in our ROTC and other accession programs.
The fact of the matter is it's not just about space. It's about information warfare. Even some of our most advanced flying platforms require ever-increasing technical skills and I think it's just the nature of what our Air Force is about that we need to encourage more and more of that.
I also think we need to be up and on the net about how this nation needs a greater investment in our technical education across the board.
General Lord: What we've done with our Space Professional Development Program is, you come into the business now with Space 100, 200, 300, and you get your continuing education throughout the years. We’ve had a breakthrough with respect to the universities. We formed a partnership with the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. We've got other universities who are part of the space education consortium so that you can articulate requirements across several universities and your credits can follow you wherever you go. You don't have to restart every time you take a new assignment. We've offered this to our partners in NASA as well as to our civilian colleagues because we're all fishing out of the same pond. We all need engineers, we all need this interest in science and mathematics and we're trying to drive this enthusiasm deep into the universities as well as down to the K-12 schools to make sure that we can get an interest in mathematics and science. It's something that Dr. Sega took on in his previous job before he became Under Secretary. He was really working a national education initiative to focus on this. I think the nation is really stepping up to that.
Mr. Gregory: Let me take it even a step further. One of the problems that I see in the country is that we have stopped or intentionally given up the ability to do the hard and scary things. Just go to a typical university and look at their engineering department and look at the number of aeronautical engineers or systems engineers. Look at those who are Americans and then look at those who come in from other countries to learn from us.
Then if you look at the aeronautics prowess of this country, in the commercial world we have one primary builder of aircraft, Boeing. That's not the way it used to be. When you look at who the competitor is, it's EADS/Airbus, so it's not even a U.S. product.
For fighter aircraft, you can see the situation is about the same—few domestic competitors.
Even though we have a corps of pioneers who are looking at the space program, looking at how they can participate in it, what I'm looking at is a country that has given up in many ways its ability to do those exciting things that demonstrate that America is number one.
We were talking about telephones a little earlier, cell phones. I don't think any of them are made in America any more. You can't find cars that are made in America. I'll bet you don't have any electronic products at home that were made in America. In my international experience, I find that they faint at America asking for help, but sometimes they just say, “well, maybe we can go someplace else.”
So there is an issue here, and General Lord was talking about it. I think it is imperative that we prepare ourselves for the future, and you do that by putting those scary goals out there and incentivizing first graders, third graders, twelfth graders, undergraduates, to learn how to build, how to understand, and to do a bit more than just operate, but actually understand how we can regain this leadership that we assume that we have, but in fact we don't have it.
General Lord: One thing we have to do in the acquisition business and especially if we attract a new engineer, a new systems engineer, to come to work for SMC, we can't sign him onto a program and then have him see no results from his or her actions for 20 years. We've got to decrease our cycle time so that our young people, especially coming out of college, can see some of the benefits of the effects that they've been working on.
So our small satellite programs, recognizing there is always a mission for larger satellites to do things, but small sats, joint warfighting space, all these provide an opportunity to be more responsive and have people involved in seeing the results of their action very quickly. One of the demographics we're facing along with industry is that people will move five or six or seven times in the first five or six years of their employment after college, and if this is who we're competing for, we've got to provide the kind of incentives that will not only recognize them for who they are, but also be able to make them fit within the military structure and then help us achieve our goals together as a team.
This is not an easy problem, but it's one I think we can step up to if we recognize it and work it hard throughout the structure.
Q: You've mentioned the need to integrate our space capabilities to help them become more synergistic and work better. Unfortunately, sometimes that kind of bumps up against security requirements, particularly when you talk about a black program or a satellite program. In terms of the nature of the security on those things, it almost drives you to a stovepipe in certain cases. I was wondering what you guys have done to address the security issues in regards to integration with black and white.
General Lord: Certainly you raised an interesting point. It's black and white integration, how we work across those seams.
We've dedicated one two-star general to it, Tom Sheridan, who used to work as our Director of Requirements in Air Force Space Command. We sent him to Washington. He's the Space Radar Program Manager in Washington and he's dedicated to one thing and that's working the black and white space seam, the integration between the intelligence community and the military community, making sure that we take advantage of this new technology in ways that will satisfy both communities.
I think it's a matter of understanding what the outputs are going to be as opposed to who's in charge of the inputs. I think we're going to have to have a breakthrough here and this is one of the test cases. In his activities at 14th Air Force, Mike was involved with working the seams. Allied releasibility—being able to share space information with our allies in a coalition kind of arrangement is something that we've bumped into. We've been able to successfully work that I think on a case-by-case basis and we've started to make more user-friendly rules, but we've got some ways to go and we'll dedicate some continued effort on that. That's for sure.
Lieutenant General Hamel: I think this is a very important issue and we're trying to take a multi-faceted approach, one approach which is to try to apply technology. There are legitimate secrets that have to be protected, but we need to then be able to make it accessible to the people that need to be able to operate with it. Multi-layer security systems in our information technology is critical and we're making some headway on that.
I think though, from the perspective of previously being an operational commander, one of the things we sometimes forget is that the security, if it gets in the way of supporting the commander's needs, then the capability is almost useless. So I think the more we have demanding commanders that insist, “I don't want some capability unless I can operationally employ it and integrate it,” this will tend to change the balance here because in too many cases the security isn't necessarily protecting some secret or fact, but rather it becomes a mechanism to try to support the existence of a program.
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